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Monthly Archives: April 2014

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A deadly new virus has killed millions of baby pigs since it was first reported in the U.S. last May. Porcine epidemic diarrhea can affect pigs of any age, but it’s life-threatening for newborns, who become dehydrated quickly.

Surprisingly, pig farmers are finding it hard to kill the dying babies. “It’s very difficult for the people who are working the barns at that point,” said affected Iowa pig farmer Craig Rowles. “No one wants to go to work today and think about making the decision of baby pigs that need to be humanely euthanized because they can’t get up anymore. Those are very hard days.”

As opposed to the days when unwanted “runts” are killed by “thumping” (slamming their heads against the floor) or when healthy 6-month-old pigs are hung upside down before their throats are slashed and they’re left to bleed out? Pigs are often still alive when they’re…

April 2014: It is suspected by a group of wolf enthusiasts in Denmark that the country probably has its first resident wolf family for over 200 years, reports Rewilding Europe. Ulvetracking Danmark has gone to great lengths to register the sounds of the Danish wolves, recorded in Jutland in January. Holly Root-Gutteridge, an English wolf expert and PhD student at Nottingham Trent University, believes that these howls stem from an entire wolf family. This means that these could be the first wolf pups born in the wild of Denmark for well since the early 19th century.

“This is the biggest fauna sensation we have had for many years,” said Mogens Trolle, zoologist in the Nature Science Museum at the University of Copenhagen.

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Namibia is home to the greatest wildlife recovery story ever told. Since its birth just over 2 decades ago, the country of Namibia has shown the world how to ensure Africa’s natural legacy while expanding livelihoods.

“Pride of Namibia” tells the story of communities committed to protecting wildlife, of a nation that has enshrined conservation into its constitution, and of the future of responsible travel – tourism that directly benefits the people who give wildlife freedom to roam.

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This year I have pledged to help raise awareness and funds for elephants and rhinos. Both of these iconic species have wandered the earth for billions of years. Under our watch they are being hunted to extinction for their tusks and horns. In less than 10 years they will be gone unless people raise awareness and help fight for their survival.

On October 4th cities all over the world are marching for rhinos and elephants, Please find your city and join the march. Please share this post with others. If there isn’t a city near you, organize a march. I’ve never done it before but I’m going to this year. I’m nervous, I feel a bit insecure. I could say I’m scared to death. But I’m going to do it. What I’ve discovered is that there is a world of people out there who are doing the same. Please join…

In a vicious act of animal cruelty a man managed to tie a donkey to his car and dragged him by for more than 3 kilometers. The incident occurred in the village Tres Barras, in the municipality of Graccho Cardos, Sergipe region, Brazil.

The perpetrator was identified as 67-year-old Celso Ferreira, who claims he tied and abused the donkey just for fun. The donkey could not survive all the heavy injuries it sustained and eventually died. Although local police immediately arrested the man, it appears he is very well connected, as the mayor inexplicably ordered his release.

As deputy captain Samuel Barreto recalls: “We were happy to apprehend the individual in record time. In just short notice however, I received a…

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Imagine being snatched from your family, confined to a cage, and perched on a tiny raft, only to have frantic dogs then set loose upon you.

Sadly, this is happening in Leslie County, Kentucky, this Saturday, April 12, during the county’s annual “Coon on a Log” races. The event is apparently being sponsored by the sheriff’s department this year, and the vulnerable raccoons used during the races will be forced to endure the hellish races repeatedly. According to one spectator from last year’s event, dogs were allowed to “bite at” the raccoons, who were sometimes “knocked into the water” and “pulled back up to go another round.” One raccoon was even “bleeding and near death.”

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England’s Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that he will work quickly to bring forward the Government’s draft bill that will ban wild animals from circuses. The bill was originally published last March, but little progress has been made since then.

The British animal rights organization, Animal Defender’s International (ADI), is concerned that if the ban is not immediately enforced, the implementation date of December 2015 may be missed. Social justice campaigner Peter Tatchell, and former Conservative MEP, author, and conservationist Stanley Johnson approached Prime Minister Cameron with this concern, and asked him to swiftly move on the bill. He responded to their request by saying “[y]es, we are going to do it.”

“It is great that David Cameron told Stanley and me today that he will ban wild animals in circuses. Let’s hold him to it. Circuses…

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As political unrest continues to threaten the peace in Ukraine, thousands of animals at one of the country’s zoos are at the brink of starvation, an international conservation group announced this week. The Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization, a nonprofit headquartered in South Africa, told The Huffington Post there has been a severe scarcity of food and medical supplies for the estimated 5,700 animals at the 104-year-old Nikolaev Zoo, located in southern Ukraine, since government funding for the zoo dried up a few weeks ago. “The fact is, they were just two days away from totally running out of food for the carnivores when we found out about this and began providing meat,” the organization’s international president, Barbara Wiseman, told HuffPost via email. “The rest of the animals were just two weeks away from running out of food.”

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This clip had to be the most pathetic of them all to date. I thought the crocodile tears were going to come out. View it here. Pretty bad acting, seeming like the words were not hers – just my own gut feeling.

But as usual a PR flier was made of it that was posted on SeaWorld’s Facebook page, and was begging to be “improved” to reflect the reality.

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[ooyala code=”M2aXF4bDo7-CozOSo5CLjGhRWTfOiLTg” player_id=”c660b791c3704ff69d4162d7adb7c4a1″]ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) A deadly virus that is decimating hog breeding operations in more than two dozen states has farmers limiting visitors to their farms and disinfecting all equipment, even trucks. PED or Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea attacks very young pigs still at the suckling stage. There is no known cure.

The virus is not a threat to food safety, but it will hit consumers at the supermarket as pork production drops this summer and prices rise. At least five million piglets have already died in the past year.

Breeders Freddie Grohmann of Cedar Ridge Farms near Red Bud, IL has kept his operation virus free. But it is impacting his export business to China. ‘China is going to hold off on letting live animals come into China until the two governments can decide a testing protocol,’ he said Thursday.

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How do you engineer a bland, depoliticised world, a consensus built around consumption and endless growth, a dream world of materialism and debt and atomisation, in which all relations can be prefixed with a dollar sign, in which we cease to fight for change? You delegate your powers to companies whose profits depend on this model.

Power is shifting: to places in which we have no voice or vote. Domestic policies are forged by special advisers and spin doctors, by panels and advisory committees stuffed with lobbyists. The self-hating state withdraws its own authority to regulate and direct. Simultaneously, the democratic vacuum at the heart of global governance is being filled, without anything resembling consent, by international bureaucrats and corporate executives. The NGOs permitted – often as an afterthought – to join them intelligibly represent neither civil society nor electorates. (And please spare me…

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TORONTO – Facebook admits it’s had its fair share of fumbles and stumbles when it comes to privacy.

So the social media giant, which has 19 million regular users in Canada and 1.23 billion globally, is rolling out a few tweaks to help users better understand how to control who sees their posts.

And it’s taking the unusual step of intervening when it suspects users could be posting publicly without realizing it.

“We understand that in the past some people have felt that privacy on Facebook has changed too frequently or that we haven’t communicated as well as we could about privacy,” says Mike Nowak, a product manager on the company’s privacy team.

A member of the House of Lords raised eyebrows in the chamber on Wednesday, when he said there could be a link between global warming and the large amount of baked beans consumed in the UK, causing people to produce so-called “smelly emissions”. 73-year-old Labour peer Viscount Simon raised his concerns about the gasses bean-eaters are contributing to the Earth’s atmosphere as Energy Minister Baroness Verma answered questions in the Upper House on how the Government was tackling climate change.

“In a programme some months ago on the BBC it was stated that this country has the largest production of baked beans and the largest consumption of baked beans in the world,” said the peer who has been a member of the House of Lords for more than 20 years. To laughter from peers, he asked Lady Verma: “Could you say whether this affects the…

Congress moved one step closer to protecting horses from the cruel practice of “soring” when the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation approved the Prevent All Soring Tactics (PAST) Act (S. 1406/H.R. 1518) today by voice vote. The PAST Act will end the decades-long abusive training method of soring, which involves the use of chemicals and devices on the legs and feet of Tennessee walking horses to force them to perform the high-stepping “Big Lick” gait.

Keith Dane, vice president of equine protection for The Humane Society of the United States, said: “Horse soring is a disgrace, but growing momentum for the PAST Act means that reform is within reach. Today’s committee action was a significant step forward. Congress should ensure a sound future for Tennessee walking horses by…

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Do dogs feel pleasure? How about crocodiles? Jonathan Balcombe says yes, they do. And not just dogs and crocodiles, but also fish, monkeys, pigs and chickens. “Why wouldn’t they?” he says. “Pleasure is nature’s way of saying ‘Good behavior!’ It encourages us to do it again. Little wonder, then, that food, play, sex and friendships feel so good. Fishes line up for a spa service from cleaner-fishes, crocodiles love to bask in the sun, as do chickens, and if you haven’t seen a pig eat a pumpkin then it’s time you turned your lights on.”

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The Vancouver Aquarium is defending itself after the city’s mayor expressed his personal beliefs against keeping whales and dolphins in captivity.

A statement issued by the aquarium Wednesday said Gregor Robertson may have personal feelings on the issue, but he might not understand the vital role belugas and dolphins play in its conservation efforts.

“Dolphins and belugas at Vancouver Aquarium play a direct and vital role in engaging people in key ocean issues,” the aquarium states.

“In addition, with rapid environmental changes in the arctic where belugas live, continued research, much of which must be done in marine science centres like the Vancouver Aquarium, is critical to their future.”

The aquarium also states that it’s the only facility in Canada that can rescue, rehabilitate and provide a long-term home to marine animals that can’t be released back into the wild.

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" - George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting - this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." - George Orwell